ARGONAUTS.CA STAFF

TORONTO – When you are in the game for as long as most Canadian Football League coaches, you tend to become a creature of habit. And the annual off-season draft is no different.

For Jim Barker and his staff, there is a set sequence of events that occur while preparing for the college and university sweepstakes – one that includes a lot of film study, a rigorous interview process, a combine, multiple mock drafts and involvement from every coach.

While all held true last week, there were two additions to Barker’s method this year that were a little unconventional by current coaching standards.

He entrusted the insight of a pair of current roster veterans to assist him and his staff as both left tackle Rob Murphy and punter/kicker Noel Prefontaine were very much involved not only on draft day but in the entire evaluation process leading into the selections.

“They approached me after the season about potentially getting into scouting,” Barker told argonauts.ca when asked about how the idea came about. “They helped break down a lot of our off-season film [on potential prospects] so I said that in return, I would allow them to go through the whole process with us.”

With a combined 18 years of CFL experience, Murphy and Prefontaine were able to bring different sets of eyes to the scouting process, and help Barker’s staff pull as much information from as many different sources as they could.

The duo spent parts of the off-season assisting Mike Hagen, Ted Goveia and the rest of the Argos scouting staff grade film on possible future CFLers and their work didn’t stop there.  Evaluating at the 2011 CFL Evaluation Camp and sitting in on prospect interviews were parts of a job that culminated with a spot in the Argos draft room last Sunday.

“We got a lot of really good observations and created a lot of really good discussion because of those two,” Barker said.

For Murphy, this may be the start of something that he could consider venturing into after he has hung up the cleats and believes that starting the process early is a huge advantage to him.

“I worked this off-season on grading film on some of the prospects and it was good to see that my input was considered. It was an all around good experience,” Murphy said.  “It is something that I am looking to getting into and, over the last two years, I have got my feet wet a little bit and it is going well so far.”

Murphy views this process as an opportunity to help both the Argos and himself in the future and Barker believes that both the player and the organization can only benefit from such a collaboration.

“They went through the mock draft and evaluation camp so it is all about them trying to prepare possibly for something after football.  They did a lot of work to get that opportunity.  It may be a little odd but it’s the way I think we need to help players in transition from playing into other careers,” Barker said.

So if the bruising offensive lineman ever does pursue a career in scouting post-football, he’s going to undoubtedly have to answer questions regarding how he would grade his team’s draft as a whole – a craft that he is already trying to perfect.

“Considering where we began with our picks if you look at how we made out I think we got great value for our picks.  We have some guys we can use in the future but we also filled some needs immediately and overall I think we had a great draft.”